CN113259974A

CN113259974A - Method and device for configuring primary and secondary cells

Info

Publication number: CN113259974A
Application number: CN202010091380.XA
Authority: CN
Inventors: 胡星星; 严乐; 张宏平; 孙慧明
Original assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: Huawei Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2020-02-13
Filing date: 2020-02-13
Publication date: 2021-08-13

Abstract

The application provides a method and a device for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell, which can reasonably configure a PSCell, are beneficial to avoiding service interruption caused by RRC reconstruction of terminal equipment, and improve the efficiency of the terminal equipment for configuring the PSCell. The method comprises the following steps: the method comprises the steps that a terminal device sends SCG failure information of a secondary cell group to a network device, the terminal device is provided with first configuration information, the first configuration information comprises the configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the SCG failure information carries at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal equipment is configured with CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access; the network device receives the SCG failure information from the terminal device, and determines whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device according to the SCG failure information.

Description

Method and device for configuring primary and secondary cells

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of communications, and in particular, to a method and an apparatus for configuring a primary secondary cell (PSCell).

Background

In dual-connectivity (DC), an access network device having control plane signaling interaction with a core network may be referred to as a Master Node (MN) or a master access network device, and other access network devices may be referred to as Secondary Nodes (SNs) or secondary access network devices. A serving cell group provided by the MN for the terminal device may be referred to as a Master Cell Group (MCG), and a serving cell group provided by the SN for the terminal device may be referred to as a Secondary Cell Group (SCG). The MCG and the SCG include at least one cell (cell), respectively. A primary cell (PCell) is a cell in the MCG, and operates on a primary carrier. The PCell refers to a cell corresponding to a terminal device performing an initial connection establishment procedure or starting a connection re-establishment procedure. A primary secondary cell (PSCell) is a cell in an SCG, and is used for terminal equipment to perform random access or Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) transmission.

Generally, due to the mobility of the terminal device, the network side may trigger a change of pscells, that is, the terminal device may switch from one PSCell to another PSCell, and one PSCell switching method that may be adopted is a PSCell addition/change (CPAC) method based on a condition, and the terminal device determines a candidate PSCell that meets the condition according to the configuration of the candidate PSCell issued by the network side. In addition, when the terminal device detects that the SCG has a problem, SCG failure information (SCG failure information) may be reported to the MN, and if the terminal device reports the SCG failure information, the network side may change the PSCell, that is, the MN may send new configuration information to the terminal device, where the configuration information is based on the incremental configuration of the PSCell that has been configured before.

In the process of reporting SCG failure information by the terminal device, the terminal device may perform CPAC based on the configuration of the candidate PSCell allocated by the network side. When a terminal device successfully accesses a candidate PSCell, the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device has become that of the candidate PSCell. If the terminal device receives a new configuration from the MN, but the new configuration is based on the incremental configuration of the PSCell that the terminal device previously accessed, how to configure the PSCell of the terminal device becomes an urgent technical problem to be solved.

Disclosure of Invention

The application provides a method and a device for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell, which can reasonably configure a PSCell, and are beneficial to avoiding service interruption caused by Radio Resource Control (RRC) reconstruction of terminal equipment, and improving efficiency of configuring the PSCell by the terminal equipment.

In a first aspect, a method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the following steps that network equipment receives SCG failure information of a secondary cell group from terminal equipment, the terminal equipment is provided with first configuration information, the first configuration information comprises the configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the SCG failure information carries at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access; and the network equipment determines whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

According to the method for configuring the PSCell, the network device judges according to the SCG failure information, the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is changed under the condition that the CPAC is not configured in the terminal device or the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access exceeds a preset threshold value, the situation that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is changed into the configuration of the candidate PSCell cannot occur, and the new configuration issued by the network device is based on the increment configuration of the previous PSCell is beneficial to avoiding service interruption caused by RRC reconstruction of the terminal device, and the PSCell configuring efficiency of the terminal device is improved.

It should be understood that the SCG access failure described above means: the SCG of the terminal device has a problem (for example, SCG radio link failure, SCG handover failure, RRC reconfiguration failure, or terminal device receiving an indication message of integrity check failure, etc.), or the terminal device has an access failure in one of the at least one candidate PSCell. The at least one candidate PSCell is configured for the terminal device by the network side through the first configuration information, and the network side may be a primary access network device or a secondary access network device. The first configuration information includes a configuration of at least one candidate PSCell and an access condition of each of the at least one candidate PSCell. In other words, the terminal device has the first configuration information, and may determine, according to the first configuration information, to access the candidate PSCell when the candidate PSCell satisfies its corresponding access condition. When the terminal device fails to access a certain candidate PSCell satisfying the access condition, other candidate pscells satisfying the access condition are tried.

In one case, the terminal device informs the network device of the SCG failure information whether or not the terminal device is configured with CPAC. In another case, the terminal device explicitly informs the network device in the SCG failure message only if the CPAC is configured, otherwise, the terminal device does not explicitly inform the network device that the CPAC is not configured.

It should be understood that, since the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access, that is, indicates that the terminal device is configured with CPAC, the SCG failure information does not include both the information that the terminal device is not configured with CPAC and the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access, because the two are contradictory.

In addition, optionally, the SCG failure information may further include a failure type (or referred to as a failure cause), where the failure type is used to indicate that the SCG failure information is reported due to the terminal device failing to access the candidate PSCell, or that the SCG failure information is reported due to the SCG of the terminal device having a problem.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the determining, by the network device, whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device according to the SCG failure information includes: when the terminal device does not configure the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access is greater than or equal to a preset threshold value, the network device determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the method further includes: the network device sends second configuration information to the terminal device, wherein the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the determining, by the network device, whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device according to the SCG failure information includes: when the terminal device configures the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs candidate primary and secondary cell access is smaller than a preset threshold, the network device determines not to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, or the network device determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device in a full configuration manner, or the network device determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device in a manner of releasing the configuration of the SCG first and then increasing the configuration of the SCG.

If the network device determines that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is not changed, the network device does not send configuration information to the terminal device, and the terminal device may continue to access other candidate pscells satisfying the access condition in at least one candidate PSCell indicated by the first configuration information. Alternatively, the network device may send an indication message to the terminal device indicating that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is not to be changed.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the method further includes: and the network equipment sends third configuration information to the terminal equipment, wherein the third configuration information comprises full configuration indication information or release indication information.

Wherein, the full configuration indication information is used to instruct the terminal device to initialize the wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration (including the configuration of the MCG and the SCG) is independent of the wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information, and exemplarily, the full configuration indication information is fullconfig; correspondingly, the terminal device receives the third configuration information from the main access network device, and releases or clears all the special wireless configurations except the terminal identifier corresponding to the MCG and the security configuration information corresponding to the main access network device.

The release indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to release the configuration of the SCG (including the configuration of the PSCell) before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; correspondingly, the terminal device receives the third configuration information from the main access network device, and releases the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device receives the third configuration information, for example, the release indication information indicates release in the form of release and add (release and add) SCG.

Further, the third configuration information further includes a configuration of the new PSCell, which may be, for example, a configuration of a PSCell (non-CPAC) that the terminal device may access according to; for example, the configuration of the new PSCell may also be a configuration of at least one candidate PSCell (based on CPAC), and the terminal device may determine based on an access condition of the at least one candidate PSCell, so as to access the candidate PSCell satisfying the condition.

With reference to the first aspect, in some implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a primary access network device or a secondary access network device.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a primary access network device, and the method further includes: the main access network equipment determines whether the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the main access network equipment or auxiliary access network equipment; and when the main access network equipment determines that the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the auxiliary access network equipment, the main access network equipment sends the SCG failure information to the auxiliary access network equipment.

In a possible implementation manner, the CPAC of the terminal device may be configured by the primary access network device or the secondary access network device. If the secondary access network device configures the CPAC for the terminal device, the primary access network device may send the SCG failure information to the secondary access network device, and the secondary access network device determines whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device. The specific method for determining whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device by the secondary access network device is the same as the specific method for determining whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device by the primary access network device, and is not described here again.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a primary access network device, and the method further includes: the primary access network equipment sends a first request message to secondary access network equipment, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell; the primary access network equipment receives a first response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified; the primary access network device sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the at least one second request message being for requesting an increase or modification of the configuration of candidate pscells; the primary access network device receives at least one second response message from the secondary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message; and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the first response message and the at least one second response message.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a secondary access network device, and the method further includes: the auxiliary access network equipment receives a first request message from a main access network equipment, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell; the auxiliary access network equipment sends a first response message to the main access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified; the secondary access network equipment receives at least one second request message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell; and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one second response message to the primary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second response message carries the identifier of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message respectively.

Optionally, the first response message may include an Identifier (ID) of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the first request message or information of other candidate pscells. In this embodiment, the information of the other candidate pscells may be the number of pscells that need to be added or modified, the ID list of pscells that need to be added or modified, the ID of the next candidate PSCell, or indication information of whether to configure the next candidate PSCell, which is not limited in this embodiment of the present application.

It should be understood that, in a possible implementation manner, if the number of pscells that need to be added or modified is carried in the first response message, or the ID list of pscells that need to be added or modified, the primary access network device may send at least one second request message in parallel, or may send at least one second request message in series, in which case, the secondary access network device may carry IDs of corresponding candidate pscells in at least one second response message sent to the terminal device.

In another possible implementation manner, if the first response message carries an ID of the next candidate PSCell or indication information used for indicating configuration of the next candidate PSCell, the primary access network device may send a second request message based on the first response message, and the secondary access network device sends a second response message based on the second request message, where the second response message, similar to the first response message, may carry an ID of the next candidate PSCell or indication information used for indicating whether to configure the next candidate PSCell. The primary access network device may determine whether to send the next request message based on the indication in the second response message, and the subsequent procedures are similar and are not listed.

Based on the above procedure, the primary access network device may obtain the identifier of the PSCell that needs to be added or changed and is determined by the secondary access network device, thereby determining the first configuration information, and sending the first configuration information to the terminal device. The second configuration information is obtained similarly to the first configuration information, and is not described herein again. With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a primary access network device, and the method further includes: the primary access network device sends at least one request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the at least one request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCells, and one request message carries the measurement result of one candidate PSCell or the identification of one candidate PSCell; the primary access network equipment receives at least one response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message; and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the at least one response message.

With reference to the first aspect, in certain implementations of the first aspect, the network device is a secondary access network device, and the method further includes: the secondary access network device receives at least one request message from the primary access network device, where the at least one request message is used to request to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, and one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identifier of one candidate PSCell; and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one response message to the primary access network equipment based on the at least one request message, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message.

In this embodiment, the primary access network device first determines the number of pscells that need to be added or modified, and then sends the same number of request messages to the secondary access network device, where one request message carries the measurement result of a candidate PSCell determined by one primary access network device. It should be understood that these candidate pscells are those that the master access network device considers to be capable of being candidate pscells, and are not final candidate pscells. And the auxiliary access network equipment receives the at least one request message, determines whether to agree to use the candidate PSCell corresponding to the request message as a final candidate PSCell according to the measurement result of the candidate PSCell carried in the request message, and returns at least one response message to the main access network equipment.

Optionally, the at least one request message or the at least one response message may be sent serially, that is, the primary access network device sends a request message, the secondary access network device returns a response message, and then the primary access network device sends the next request message, and the secondary access network device returns the next response message. Therefore, the processing time delay can be reduced, and the feedback efficiency of the auxiliary access network equipment can be improved.

Optionally, the measurement result of the candidate PSCell carried in the request message may also be replaced with an ID of the candidate PSCell, which is not limited in this embodiment of the application.

In a second aspect, another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the steps that terminal equipment determines that SCG access of a secondary cell group fails, the terminal equipment has first configuration information, and the first configuration information comprises configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell; the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to main access network equipment, wherein the SCG failure information comprises at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access.

With reference to the second aspect, in some implementations of the second aspect, the SCG access failure indicates: the SCG of the terminal device is in a problem, or the terminal device fails to access one of the at least one candidate PSCell.

With reference to the second aspect, in certain implementations of the second aspect, the method further includes: the terminal device receiving second configuration information from the main access network device, wherein the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information; and the terminal equipment accesses the PSCell meeting the conditions based on the second configuration information.

With reference to the second aspect, in certain implementations of the second aspect, the method further includes: the terminal device receives third configuration information from the main access network device, where the third configuration information includes full configuration indication information or release indication information, where the full configuration indication information is used to indicate the terminal device to initialize a wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration is independent of a wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; and the terminal equipment releases the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information.

In a third aspect, another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the steps that a primary access network device sends a first request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell; the primary access network equipment receives a first response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified; the primary access network device sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the at least one second request message being for requesting an increase or modification of the configuration of candidate pscells; the primary access network device receives at least one second response message from the secondary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message; the master access network device sends configuration information to a terminal device based on the first response message and the at least one second response message, wherein the configuration information is used for configuring the candidate PSCell.

In a fourth aspect, another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the steps that a secondary access network device receives a first request message from a primary access network device, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell; the auxiliary access network equipment sends a first response message to the main access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified; the secondary access network equipment receives at least one second request message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell; and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one second response message to the primary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second response message carries the identifier of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message respectively.

In a fifth aspect, another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the steps that a main access network device sends at least one request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the at least one request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of candidate PSCells, and one request message carries the measurement result of one candidate PSCell or the identification of one candidate PSCell; the primary access network equipment receives at least one response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message; and the main access network equipment sends configuration information to terminal equipment based on the at least one response message, wherein the configuration information is used for configuring the candidate PSCell.

In a sixth aspect, another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, including: the method comprises the steps that a secondary access network device receives at least one request message from a main access network device, wherein the at least one request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of candidate PSCells, and one request message carries the measurement result of one candidate PSCell or the identification of one candidate PSCell; and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one response message to the primary access network equipment based on the at least one request message, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message.

In a seventh aspect, an apparatus for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided to perform the method in any possible implementation manner of the above aspects. In particular, the apparatus comprises means for performing the method in any one of the possible implementations of the aspects described above.

In an eighth aspect, an apparatus for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell is provided, which includes a processor coupled with a memory and configured to execute instructions in the memory to implement the method in any one of the possible implementations of the above aspects. Optionally, the communication device further comprises a memory. Optionally, the communication device further comprises a communication interface, the processor being coupled to the communication interface.

In one implementation, the means for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a network device. When the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a network device, the communication interface may be a transceiver, or an input/output interface.

In another implementation, the means for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a chip configured in the network device. When the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a chip configured in a network device, the communication interface may be an input/output interface.

In one implementation, the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a terminal device. When the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a terminal device, the communication interface may be a transceiver, or an input/output interface.

In another implementation, the means for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a chip configured in the terminal device. When the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells is a chip configured in a terminal device, the communication interface may be an input/output interface.

In a ninth aspect, there is provided a processor comprising: input circuit, output circuit and processing circuit. The processing circuit is configured to receive signals through the input circuit and transmit signals through the output circuit, so that the processor performs the method of any one of the above-mentioned aspects.

In a specific implementation process, the processor may be a chip, the input circuit may be an input pin, the output circuit may be an output pin, and the processing circuit may be a transistor, a gate circuit, a flip-flop, various logic circuits, and the like. The input signal received by the input circuit may be received and input by, for example and without limitation, a receiver, the signal output by the output circuit may be output to and transmitted by a transmitter, for example and without limitation, and the input circuit and the output circuit may be the same circuit that functions as the input circuit and the output circuit, respectively, at different times. The embodiment of the present application does not limit the specific implementation manner of the processor and various circuits.

In a tenth aspect, a processing apparatus is provided that includes a processor and a memory. The processor is configured to read instructions stored in the memory and to receive signals via the receiver and transmit signals via the transmitter to perform the method of any one of the possible implementations of the aspects described above.

Optionally, the number of the processors is one or more, and the number of the memories is one or more.

Alternatively, the memory may be integral to the processor or provided separately from the processor.

In a specific implementation process, the memory may be a non-transient memory, such as a Read Only Memory (ROM), which may be integrated on the same chip as the processor, or may be separately disposed on different chips.

It will be appreciated that the associated data interaction process, for example, sending the indication information, may be a process of outputting the indication information from the processor, and receiving the capability information may be a process of receiving the input capability information from the processor. In particular, the data output by the processor may be output to a transmitter and the input data received by the processor may be from a receiver. The transmitter and receiver may be collectively referred to as a transceiver, among others.

The processing device in the tenth aspect may be a chip, the processor may be implemented by hardware or software, and when implemented by hardware, the processor may be a logic circuit, an integrated circuit, or the like; when implemented in software, the processor may be a general-purpose processor implemented by reading software code stored in a memory, which may be integrated with the processor, located external to the processor, or stand-alone.

In an eleventh aspect, there is provided a computer program product comprising: computer program (also called code, or instructions), which when executed, causes a computer to perform the method of any of the above aspects in possible implementations.

In a twelfth aspect, a computer-readable medium is provided, which stores a computer program (which may also be referred to as code, or instructions) that, when executed on a computer, causes the computer to perform the method of any of the possible implementations of the above aspects.

In a thirteenth aspect, a communication system is provided, which includes the terminal device and the network device.

Drawings

Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a communication system of an embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 2 shows a schematic flow chart of a method for configuring a primary and secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 3 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 4 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 5 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 6 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 7 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 8 is a schematic block diagram illustrating an apparatus for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application.

Fig. 9 is a schematic block diagram of another apparatus for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed Description

The technical solution in the present application will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

The technical solution of the embodiment of the present application may be applied to a Dual Connectivity (DC) communication system, and the Dual Connectivity (DC) may also be referred to as a multi-radio dual connectivity (MR-DC). Generally, a dual connectivity communication system supports simultaneous deployment of two different wireless access systems, and allows devices to communicate with each other based on the two different wireless access systems, so as to improve the utilization rate of wireless resources, reduce the system handover delay, and improve the performance of users and systems. In the dual connectivity communication system, two network devices supporting different wireless access systems may be deployed simultaneously, and similarly, the terminal device may support simultaneous access to the two different network devices. Further, the technical scheme of the embodiment of the application can be applied to the internet of vehicles, such as V2X, LTE-V, V2V and the like, or can be used in the fields of intelligent driving, intelligent internet connection and the like.

The wireless access system in the dual connectivity communication system may include, but is not limited to, the following systems: a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, an LTE Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) system, an LTE Time Division Duplex (TDD) system, a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a fifth generation (5G) system, a New Radio (NR) system, or other evolved communication systems. For example, a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system and a New Radio (NR) system may be deployed simultaneously in a dual connectivity communication system, but the present invention is not limited thereto.

The terminal device in the embodiment of the present application may also be referred to as: user Equipment (UE), Mobile Station (MS), Mobile Terminal (MT), access terminal, subscriber unit, subscriber station, mobile station, remote terminal, mobile device, user terminal, wireless communication device, user agent, or user device, etc.

The terminal device may be a device providing voice/data connectivity to a user, e.g. a handheld device, a vehicle mounted device, etc. with wireless connection capability. Currently, some examples of terminals are: a mobile phone (mobile phone), a tablet computer, a notebook computer, a palm computer, a Mobile Internet Device (MID), a wearable device, a Virtual Reality (VR) device, an Augmented Reality (AR) device, a wireless terminal in industrial control (industrial control), a wireless terminal in self driving (self driving), a wireless terminal in remote operation (remote local supply), a wireless terminal in smart grid (smart grid), a wireless terminal in transportation security (transportation safety), a wireless terminal in city (city), a wireless terminal in smart home (smart home), a cellular phone, a cordless phone, a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone, a wireless local loop (wireless local) phone, a personal digital assistant (WLL) station, a handheld personal communication device with wireless communication function, a wireless terminal in industrial control (industrial control), a wireless terminal in transportation security (personal control), a wireless terminal in city (smart home), a wireless terminal in smart home (smart home), a cellular phone, a cordless phone, a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone, a wireless local loop (personal digital assistant (PDA) phone, a wireless local communication device with wireless communication function, a wireless communication device, a, A computing device or other processing device connected to a wireless modem, a vehicle-mounted device, a wearable device, a terminal device in a 5G network, or a terminal device in a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) for future evolution, and the like, which are not limited in this embodiment of the present application.

By way of example and not limitation, in the embodiments of the present application, the terminal device may also be a wearable device. Wearable equipment can also be called wearable intelligent equipment, is the general term of applying wearable technique to carry out intelligent design, develop the equipment that can dress to daily wearing, like glasses, gloves, wrist-watch, dress and shoes etc.. A wearable device is a portable device that is worn directly on the body or integrated into the clothing or accessories of the user. The wearable device is not only a hardware device, but also realizes powerful functions through software support, data interaction and cloud interaction. The generalized wearable smart device includes full functionality, large size, and can implement full or partial functionality without relying on a smart phone, such as: smart watches or smart glasses and the like, and only focus on a certain type of application functions, and need to be used in cooperation with other devices such as smart phones, such as various smart bracelets for physical sign monitoring, smart jewelry and the like.

In addition, in the embodiment of the present application, the terminal device may also be a terminal device in an internet of things (IoT) system, where IoT is an important component of future information technology development, and a main technical feature of the present application is to connect an article with a network through a communication technology, so as to implement an intelligent network with interconnected human-computer and interconnected objects. The terminal device of the present application may also be an on-board module, an on-board component, an on-board chip, or an on-board unit built into the vehicle as one or more components or units, and the vehicle may implement the method of the present application through the built-in on-board module, on-board component, on-board chip, or on-board unit. Therefore, the embodiment of the application can be applied to vehicle networking, such as vehicle to outside (V2X), long term evolution (LTE-V) for vehicle to vehicle communication, V2V, and the like.

In addition, the network device in this embodiment may be a device for communicating with a terminal device, which may also be referred to as an access network device or a radio access network device, and may be a Transmission Reception Point (TRP), an evolved NodeB (eNB) or an eNodeB in an LTE system, a home evolved NodeB (or home Node B, HNB), a baseband unit (BBU), a wireless controller in a Cloud Radio Access Network (CRAN) scenario, or the network device may be a relay station, an access point, a vehicle-mounted device, a wearable device, a network device in a 5G network, or a network device in a PLMN network that is evolved in the future, or the like, may be an Access Point (AP) in a WLAN, may be a new radio system (new radio system, NR) system, the embodiments of the present application are not limited.

In one network configuration, a network device may include a Centralized Unit (CU) node, or a Distributed Unit (DU) node, or a RAN device including a CU node and a DU node, or a RAN device including a control plane CU node (CU-CP node) and a user plane CU node (CU-UP node) and a DU node.

The network device provides a service for a cell, and a terminal device communicates with the cell through a transmission resource (e.g., a frequency domain resource, or a spectrum resource) allocated by the network device, where the cell may belong to a macro base station (e.g., a macro eNB or a macro gNB), or may belong to a base station corresponding to a small cell (small cell), where the small cell may include: urban cell (metro cell), micro cell (microcell), pico cell (pico cell), femto cell (femto cell), etc., and these small cells have the characteristics of small coverage and low transmission power, and are suitable for providing high-rate data transmission service.

In the embodiment of the application, the terminal device or the network device includes a hardware layer, an operating system layer running on the hardware layer, and an application layer running on the operating system layer. The hardware layer includes hardware such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a Memory Management Unit (MMU), and a memory (also referred to as a main memory). The operating system may be any one or more computer operating systems that implement business processing through processes (processes), such as a Linux operating system, a Unix operating system, an Android operating system, an iOS operating system, or a windows operating system. The application layer comprises applications such as a browser, an address list, word processing software, instant messaging software and the like. Furthermore, the embodiment of the present application does not particularly limit the specific structure of the execution main body of the method provided by the embodiment of the present application, as long as the communication can be performed according to the method provided by the embodiment of the present application by running the program recorded with the code of the method provided by the embodiment of the present application, for example, the execution main body of the method provided by the embodiment of the present application may be a terminal device or a network device, or a functional module capable of calling the program and executing the program in the terminal device or the network device.

In addition, various aspects or features of the present application may be implemented as a method, apparatus, or article of manufacture using standard programming and/or engineering techniques. The term "article of manufacture" as used herein is intended to encompass a computer program accessible from any computer-readable device, carrier, or media. For example, computer-readable media may include, but are not limited to: magnetic storage devices (e.g., hard disk, floppy disk, or magnetic tape), optical disks (e.g., Compact Disk (CD), Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), etc.), smart cards, and flash memory devices (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), card, stick, or key drive, etc.). In addition, various storage media described herein can represent one or more devices and/or other machine-readable media for storing information. The term "machine-readable medium" can include, without being limited to, wireless channels and various other media capable of storing, containing, and/or carrying instruction(s) and/or data.

For the understanding of the embodiments of the present application, a detailed description will be given of a communication system suitable for the embodiments of the present application with reference to fig. 1.

Fig. 1 shows a communication system 100 to which an embodiment of the present application is applied. As shown in fig. 1, the communication system 100 may include a primary access network device 110, a secondary access network device 120, and a terminal device 130.

The primary access network device 110 is an access network device having control plane signaling interaction with the core network, and may also be referred to as a Master Node (MN), and the secondary access network device 120 is an access network device having no control plane signaling interaction with the core network, and may also be referred to as a Secondary Node (SN). However, it should be understood that the user plane of secondary access network device 120 may have a connection with the core network, that is, the core network may directly send data to terminal device 130 through secondary access network device 120; alternatively, the core network may also send data to the main access network device 110 through the secondary access network device 120, and the main access network device 110 sends the data to the terminal device 130. In addition, the user plane of the main access network device 110 may also have a connection with the core network, which is not described herein. Specifically, the primary access network device 110 supports a first radio access system, and the secondary access network device 120 supports a second radio access system, that is, the communication system 100 deploys the first radio access system and the second radio access system at the same time. Terminal device 130 may support simultaneous access to primary access network device 110 and secondary access network device 120, that is, terminal device 130 may perform uplink and downlink communication with primary access network device 110, or may perform uplink and downlink communication with secondary access network device 120.

It should be understood that the first wireless access system and the second wireless access system may be the same or different. For example, the first radio access system and the second radio access system both employ the 4th generation (4G) mobile communication technology, or both employ the 5th generation (5G) mobile communication technology. For another example, the first radio access system adopts a 4G mobile communication technology, and the second radio access system adopts a 5G mobile communication technology; alternatively, the first radio access system adopts a 5G mobile communication technology, and the second radio access system adopts a 4G mobile communication technology. The embodiments of the present application do not limit this.

It should be noted that, for convenience of understanding, only two network devices (a primary access network device and a secondary access network device) and one terminal device are exemplarily shown in fig. 1, and optionally, the communication system 100 may further include other numbers of network devices and may include other numbers of terminal devices within a coverage range of each network device, which is not limited in this embodiment of the present application.

Optionally, the communication system 100 may further include other network entities such as a network controller, a mobility management entity, and the like, which is not limited thereto in the embodiments of the present application.

Since the terminal device can simultaneously receive services of multiple cells of one access network device under the same access network device, a serving cell group provided by the main access network device 110 for the terminal device may be referred to as a Master Cell Group (MCG), and a serving cell group provided by the auxiliary access network device 120 for the terminal device may be referred to as an auxiliary cell group (SCG). The MCG and the SCG include at least one cell (cell), respectively. Primary access network device 110 has a primary cell (PCell), secondary access network device 120 has a primary secondary cell (PSCell), and PCell and PSCell may be collectively referred to as a special cell (scell ). When there are multiple cells in the MCG or SCG, the cells other than the SpCell may be referred to as secondary cells (scells). At this time, the SCell and the SpCell in each cell group perform carrier aggregation to provide transmission resources for the terminal device together. In the following, reference will be made to the terms involved.

1. Primary cell PCell: deployed at the primary frequency point (or, operating on the primary carrier). The PCell is a cell corresponding to the initial connection establishment procedure or the connection reestablishment procedure initiated by the terminal device, that is, the terminal device initiates the initial connection establishment procedure or the connection reestablishment procedure in a certain cell, and the cell is called the PCell. During handover, one cell may be indicated as PCell.

2. Primary and secondary cell PSCell: the cell is a cell in which the terminal device performs random access or initial Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) transmission in the SCG (physical uplink shared channel, PUSCH) (that is, the terminal device skips a random access process to transmit data transmission in a secondary access network device change process), or a cell in the SCG of the secondary access network device that initiates random access in a synchronization reconfiguration process.

3. Secondary cell SCell: operating on the secondary carrier, the SCell may be configured to provide additional radio resources once the RRC connection is established. In the dual connectivity system, cells except for PCell and PSCell in MCG and SCG may be referred to as scells.

4. Serving cell (serving cell): a terminal device in an RRC CONNECTED state (RRC _ CONNECTED) has only one serving cell, i.e., PCell, if carrier aggregation or dual connectivity is not configured. If carrier aggregation or dual connectivity is configured, the serving cell of the terminal device is a cell set consisting of a PCell, a PSCell, and all scells.

It should be understood that each carrier (CC) corresponds to an independent cell. In one possible design, a terminal device configured for dual connectivity may be connected to 1 PCell and up to 31 scells. The PCell, PSCell and all scells of a terminal device constitute the serving cell set of the terminal device. The serving cell of the terminal device may refer to a PCell, may also refer to a PSCell, and may also refer to an SCell.

5. Carrier Aggregation (CA): a technique for configuring a plurality of carriers (cells) for a single terminal device to perform data transmission together.

Due to the mobility of the terminal device, the network side may trigger a change of PSCell, i.e. the terminal device may switch from one PSCell to another PSCell. It should be understood that a PSCell change may be a handover of a terminal device from a cell of one secondary access network device to a cell of another secondary access network device, or a handover of a terminal device from a cell of a secondary access network device to another cell of the secondary access network device. In addition, the change of the PSCell may be triggered by the primary access network device or may be triggered by the secondary access network device. A conditional PSCell addition/change (CPAC) method based on conditions is: the network side firstly configures a plurality of candidate PSCells, informs the terminal equipment of the configuration of the plurality of candidate PSCells and the corresponding condition of each candidate PSCell, and then when the terminal equipment judges that the candidate PSCells meet the corresponding condition, the terminal equipment can be directly accessed to the candidate PSCells meeting the condition. Therefore, the network side does not need to send a new PSCell configuration to the terminal equipment after the terminal equipment reports the measurement report, and the time delay required by increasing or changing the PSCell can be shortened. Aiming at the scene that the secondary access network equipment triggers and changes the PSCell, the situation that the signal quality of the PSCell cannot be reported and the reconfiguration message cannot be issued when the signal quality of the PSCell is changed rapidly can be avoided, and therefore the robustness of the PSCell change is improved.

It is understood that the CPAC described herein is a generic term, and in this application CPAC may refer to changing the configuration of the PSCell based on an increase in conditions and/or conditions.

In addition, when the terminal device detects that the SCG has a problem, the terminal device may report SCG failure information (SCG failure information) to the main access network device, and specifically, the SCG having the problem may include the following multiple situations:

1. the terminal device detects a Radio Link Failure (RLF) of the SCG. The trigger conditions for SCG RLF are: (1) the terminal equipment detects that the quality of the downlink signal of the SCG is poor; illustratively, the RRC layer of the terminal device receives N consecutive out-of-sync indications of the PSCell from the physical layer, where N is an integer greater than or equal to 1. Specifically, the terminal device may start a timer T310, and if the RRC layer of the terminal device does not receive M consecutive synchronization indications of the PSCell from the physical layer before the time-out of T310, where M is an integer greater than or equal to 1, the terminal device considers that RLF occurs in the SCG. In the N out-of-synchronization indications and the M synchronization indications, values of N and M may be pre-configured by the network side to the terminal device. (2) The terminal device receives the random access problem indication. (3) The terminal device receives a data packet of a Signaling Radio Bearer (SRB) or a Data Radio Bearer (DRB) to the maximum retransmission number.

2. A switching failure occurs in the SCG, for example, a PSCell switching failure.

3. The RRC reconfiguration fails, for example, the terminal device fails to follow a portion of the configuration in the RRC reconfiguration message received from the secondary access network device.

4. And the terminal equipment receives the indication information of the integrity check failure.

In this application, if the terminal device determines that an SCG corresponding to a currently configured PSCell has a problem, or if the terminal device fails to access the candidate PSCell, the terminal device sends the SCG failure information to the main access network device. The primary access network device may change the PSCell when receiving the SCG failure information, that is, the primary access network device may send a new configuration to the terminal device based on the PSCell currently configured by the terminal device, where the new configuration is an incremental configuration of the SCG corresponding to the PSCell currently configured by the terminal device. The incremental configuration here means that if some configurations are the same as the configurations of SCGs corresponding to pscells that have been originally configured, the network side may only issue those configurations that need to be modified or added without issuing these same configurations. Wherein, the configuration of the SCG includes the configuration of the PSCell and the configuration of the possible scells in the SCG. It should be understood that the above-mentioned "currently configured PSCell" refers to a PSCell corresponding to a PSCell configuration that has been validated by the terminal device side.

In the process of reporting SCG failure information by the terminal device, since the network side has configured candidate pscells to the terminal device, if the terminal device fails to access one of the candidate pscells, the terminal device may also select other candidate pscells that satisfy the conditions and are configured by the network device to access the terminal device, and when the terminal device successfully accesses one of the candidate pscells, the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device becomes the configuration of the candidate PSCell. If the terminal device receives a new configuration from the primary access network device, where the new configuration is used to add and/or change the PSCell, because the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device has become the configuration of the candidate PSCell, and the new configuration issued by the primary access network device is based on the previous incremental configuration of the PSCell, the terminal device may not execute the new configuration issued by the primary access network device, which may result in the terminal device performing Radio Resource Control (RRC) reestablishment. Specifically, if the terminal device executes a new configuration of the PSCell issued by the host access network device based on the configuration of the candidate PSCell that is successfully accessed currently, the PSCell configuration on the terminal device side may be inconsistent with the PSCell configuration on the network side, which may cause the terminal device to perform RRC reestablishment and cause service interruption.

The application provides a method and a device for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell, which can reasonably configure a PSCell, are beneficial to avoiding service interruption caused by RRC reconstruction of terminal equipment, and improve the efficiency of the terminal equipment for configuring the PSCell.

To facilitate understanding of the embodiments of the present application, the following description is made.

1. In the embodiment of the present application, "for indicating" may include for direct indication and for indirect indication, and may also include explicit indication and implicit indication. If the information indicated by a certain piece of information is referred to as information to be indicated, in a specific implementation process, there are many ways of indicating the information to be indicated, for example, but not limited to, directly indicating the information to be indicated, such as the information to be indicated itself or an index of the information to be indicated. The information to be indicated can also be indirectly indicated by indicating other information, wherein an association relationship exists between the other information and the information to be indicated. It is also possible to indicate only a part of the information to be indicated, while the other part of the information to be indicated is known or predetermined. For example, indication of information to be indicated can also be implemented by means of pre-agreed (e.g., protocol definition) whether a certain cell exists, thereby reducing the indication overhead to some extent.

2. The first, second, third, fourth and various numerical numbers in the embodiments shown below are merely for convenience of description and are not intended to limit the scope of the embodiments of the present application. E.g. to distinguish different configuration information, to distinguish different messages, etc.

3. In the embodiments illustrated below, "pre-acquisition" may include signaling by the network device or pre-defined, e.g., protocol definition. The "predefined" may be implemented by saving a corresponding code, table, or other means that can be used to indicate the relevant information in advance in the device (for example, including the terminal device and the network device), and the present application is not limited to a specific implementation manner thereof.

4. The "protocol" referred to in the embodiment of the present application may refer to a standard protocol in the communication field, and may include, for example, a Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocol, a New Radio (NR) protocol, and a related protocol applied in a future communication system, which is not limited in the present application.

The various embodiments provided herein are described in detail below.

Fig. 2 shows a schematic flow chart of a method for configuring a primary and secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application. The method 200 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S210, the terminal equipment determines that SCG access fails.

The terminal device has first configuration information containing a configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell.

S220, the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to the main access network equipment.

Correspondingly, the primary access network equipment receives SCG failure information of the secondary cell group from the terminal equipment.

The SCG failure information carries at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with CPAC; the terminal equipment is configured with CPAC; or, the number of times that the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access may also be understood as the number of pscells that the terminal device attempts to access.

And S230, the main access network equipment determines whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

It should be understood that the SCG access failure described above means: the SCG of the terminal device has a problem (for example, a SCG radio link failure, a SCG handover failure, an RRC reconfiguration failure, or an indication that the terminal device receives an integrity check failure, etc.), or the terminal device has an access failure in one of the at least one candidate PSCell. The at least one candidate PSCell is configured for the terminal device by the network side through the first configuration information, and the network side may be a primary access network device or a secondary access network device. The first configuration information includes a configuration of at least one candidate PSCell and an access condition of each of the at least one candidate PSCell. In other words, the terminal device has the first configuration information, and may determine, according to the first configuration information, to access the candidate PSCell when the candidate PSCell satisfies its corresponding access condition. When the terminal device fails to access a certain candidate PSCell satisfying the access condition, other candidate pscells satisfying the access condition are tried. Typically, the terminal device attempts access in two candidate pscells that satisfy the access condition.

In this embodiment of the present application, the first configuration information may be obtained by the terminal device in advance, and for example, the network side may send the first configuration information to the terminal device through an RRC reconfiguration message. Illustratively, for the primary access network device, the primary access network device may send an RRC reconfiguration message to the end device via signaling (e.g., SRB1) between the primary access network device and the end device. For example, for the secondary access network device, the secondary access network device may send an RRC reconfiguration message to the terminal device through signaling (e.g., SRB3) between the secondary access network device and the terminal device; or, the auxiliary access network device may also send the RRC reconfiguration message to the main access network device, and the main access network device sends the RRC reconfiguration message to the terminal device through a signaling (for example, SRB1) between the main access network device and the terminal device, that is, the RRC reconfiguration message of the auxiliary access network device is encapsulated in the RRC reconfiguration message of the main access network device and sent to the terminal device.

Specifically, after determining that the SCG access fails, the terminal device may send SCG failure information to the primary access network device, where the SCG failure information carries at least one of: whether the terminal device is configured with CPAC; or, the terminal device is configured with CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access. The primary access network device receives the SCG failure information, and may determine whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device according to the information contained therein.

Therefore, in the method for configuring the PSCell according to the embodiment of the present application, the master access network device determines according to the SCG failure information, and changes the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device only when the terminal device does not configure the CPAC or when the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access exceeds a preset threshold, so that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device does not change into the configuration of the candidate PSCell, and a new configuration issued by the master access network device is based on an incremental configuration of the PSCell before, which is beneficial to avoiding service interruption of the terminal device due to RRC reestablishment, and improving efficiency of the terminal device in configuring the PSCell.

As an optional embodiment, the content contained in the SCG failure information and the main access network device perform the determination according to the content contained in the SCG failure information, which may be divided into the following cases:

in case 1, the SCG failure information includes whether the terminal device is configured with CPAC.

In case 1, whether or not the terminal device is configured with CPAC, the terminal device informs the primary access network device of SCG failure information. Exemplarily, the SCG failure information may include 1-bit indication information, and if the 1-bit indication information is 0, it indicates that the terminal device is not configured with CPAC, and if the 1-bit indication information is 1, it indicates that the terminal device is configured with CPAC; or, if the 1-bit indication information is 1, it indicates that the terminal device is not configured with the CPAC, and if the 1-bit indication information is 0, it indicates that the terminal device is configured with the CPAC, which is not limited in this embodiment of the application.

For the main access network device, if the terminal device configures the CPAC, the main access network device may determine not to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a full configuration manner, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a manner of releasing the SCG configuration and then increasing the SCG configuration; if the terminal device is not configured with the CPAC, the main access network device determines that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device can be changed.

And 2, the SCG failure information contains the configuration of CPAC of the terminal equipment.

In case 2, the terminal device explicitly informs the primary access network device in the SCG failure information when the CPAC is configured, otherwise, the terminal device does not explicitly inform the primary access network device that the CPAC is not configured. For example, SCG failure information containing a special indication bit may be designed, and the special indication bit indicates that the terminal is configured with CPAC; if the SCG failure information does not include the special indicator bit, it indicates that the terminal is not configured with CPAC, the special indicator bit may be a 1-bit indicator bit, and the value of the indicator bit may be 1 or 0 or null (null), which is not limited herein. It should be understood that if the SCG failure information includes the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access, that is, case 4, it indicates that the terminal device is configured with the CPAC, and the primary access network device may consider that the terminal device is not configured with the CPAC only if the SCG failure information includes neither information that the CPAC is configured nor the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access.

And in case 3, the SCG failure information includes that the terminal device is not configured with CPAC.

In case 3, the terminal device explicitly informs the terminal device in the SCG failure message only when the CPAC is not configured, otherwise, the terminal device does not explicitly inform the terminal device that the CPAC is configured, and the specific informing manner may refer to case 2, which is not described herein again. It should be understood that the primary access network device may consider that the terminal device is configured with CPAC as long as the SCG failure information does not include information that the CPAC is not configured.

In case 4, the SCG failure information includes the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access.

After the terminal device fails to execute the candidate PSCell once, it may try to access the next candidate PSCell satisfying the access condition until the number of accesses reaches a preset threshold. The preset threshold may be obtained by the terminal device in advance. Therefore, for the primary access network device, if the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access is less than a preset threshold (for example, 2 times), the primary access network device may determine not to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a full configuration manner, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a manner of releasing the SCG configuration first and then increasing the SCG configuration; if the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access is greater than or equal to a preset threshold, the primary access network device determines that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device can be changed.

Case 5, the SCG failure information includes the terminal device configuring the CPAC, and the number of times the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access.

In case 5, the terminal device may include, in the SCG failure information, both the information that the terminal device configures the CPAC and the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access. In this case, the master access network device may make the determination according to the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access. If the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access is less than a preset threshold (e.g., 2 times), the primary access network device may determine not to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a full configuration manner, or determine to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a manner of releasing the SCG configuration and then increasing the SCG configuration; if the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access is greater than or equal to a preset threshold, the primary access network device determines that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device can be changed.

It should be understood that, since the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access, that is, indicates that the terminal device is configured with CPAC, the SCG failure information does not include both the information that the terminal device is not configured with CPAC and the number of times that the terminal device performs at least one candidate PSCell access.

As an optional embodiment, if the primary access network device determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, the primary access network device may send second configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information; correspondingly, the terminal device receives the second configuration information from the main access network device, and accesses the PSCell configured in the second configuration information or the PSCell satisfying the condition in the second configuration information based on the second configuration information. It should be understood that the above-mentioned configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information may refer to a PSCell that the terminal device accesses before switching pscells.

As an optional embodiment, if the master access network device determines not to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, the master access network device may not send the configuration information to the terminal device, and the terminal device may continue to perform access to other candidate pscells satisfying the access condition in the at least one candidate PSCell indicated by the first configuration information. Alternatively, the primary access network device may send an indication message to the terminal device indicating that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is not to be changed.

As an optional embodiment, if the main access network device determines to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device in a full configuration manner or in a manner of releasing the SCG configuration first and then increasing the SCG configuration, the main access network device may send third configuration information to the terminal device, where the third configuration information includes full configuration indication information or release indication information.

Wherein, the full configuration indication information is used to instruct the terminal device to initialize the wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration (including the configuration of the MCG and the SCG) is independent of the wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information, and may be referred to as fullconfig for example; correspondingly, the terminal device receives the third configuration information from the main access network device, and releases or clears all the special wireless configurations except the terminal identifier corresponding to the MCG and the security configuration information corresponding to the main access network device.

It should be understood that, the method for configuring the PSCell for the terminal device by the main access network device is described above only by taking the main access network device as an example. In a possible implementation, the CPAC of the terminal device may be configured by the primary access network device, or configured by the secondary access network device.

When the CPAC of the terminal device is configured by the secondary access network device, after S220, that is, after the primary access network device receives the SCG failure information from the terminal device, the method further includes:

s240, the primary access network device determines whether the CPAC configured for the terminal device is the primary access network device or the secondary access network device.

And S250, when the main access network equipment determines that the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the auxiliary access network equipment, the main access network equipment sends SCG failure information to the auxiliary access network equipment, and correspondingly, the auxiliary access network equipment receives the SCG failure information.

And S260, the auxiliary access network equipment determines whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

In this embodiment, if the terminal device is configured with CPAC, S230 may be replaced with S240 to S260. It should be understood that the specific method for the secondary access network device to determine whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device is the same as the specific method for the primary access network device to determine whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device, and details are not repeated here.

Optionally, in this embodiment of the present application, if the secondary access network device configures the CPAC for the terminal device, the secondary access network device notifies the primary access network device through an interface message between the primary access network device and the secondary access network device, and the secondary access network device configures the CPAC for the terminal device.

In this embodiment of the present application, optionally, in the MR-DC, the PSCell is determined by the secondary access network device, and the configuration of the PSCell is configured by the secondary access network device for the terminal device, in a possible implementation manner, the primary access network device sends a measurement result that is reported by the terminal device and can be used as a candidate PSCell to the secondary access network device, the secondary access network device selects a PSCell according to the measurement result, and the primary access network device does not know which cell is the PSCell. When the CPAC is adopted, the primary access network device may send an addition or modification request, such as an SN addition request (SN additional request) or an SN modification request (SN modification request), to the secondary access network device, request the secondary access network device to select a candidate PSCell, and after the secondary access network device selects the candidate PSCell and determines the configuration of the PSCell, the secondary access network device may send a response message to the primary access network device. To reduce processing complexity, the primary and secondary access network devices typically perform an add or modify request procedure for one candidate PSCell. The embodiment of the application provides the following two configurations of CPAC.

As an optional embodiment, the method further includes: the method comprises the steps that a primary access network device sends a first request message to a secondary access network device, the secondary access network device receives the first request message from the primary access network device, and the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell; the auxiliary access network equipment sends a first response message to the main access network equipment, the main access network equipment receives the first response message from the auxiliary access network equipment, and the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be added or modified; the primary access network device sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the secondary access network device receiving at least one second request message from the secondary access network device, the at least one second request message requesting to add or modify the configuration of candidate pscells; the auxiliary access network device sends at least one second response message to the main access network device, the main access network device receives the at least one second response message from the auxiliary access network device, and the at least one second response message carries the identifier of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message respectively; and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the first response message and the at least one second response message.

Optionally, in a possible scheme, the first response message carries an identifier of the candidate PSCell configured in the first response message. The number of the candidate pscells that need to be added or modified and carried by the first response message is the number of other candidate pscells except the candidate PSCell corresponding to the first response message. In another possible scheme, the number of candidate pscells that need to be added or modified, which is carried by the first response message, is the number of all candidate pscells that the secondary access network device wishes to configure.

In this embodiment, the primary access network device may first send a request message (i.e., a first request message) to the secondary access network device, and the secondary access network device may first determine the number of pscells that need to be added or modified after receiving the first request message, and carry the number of pscells that need to be added or modified in a first response message sent to the primary access network device. The primary access network device may send a second request message (i.e., the at least one second request message) corresponding to the number of pscells to the secondary access network device according to the number of pscells that needs to be increased or modified, so that the secondary access network device returns a second response message (i.e., the at least one second response message) corresponding to the number of pscells. For example, the number of pscells that need to be added or modified is determined by the secondary access network device to be 5, and the primary access network device may send 4 second request messages to the secondary access network device when 1 first request message has been sent to the secondary access network device, so as to obtain the configuration of 5 pscells through 5 response messages (1 first response message and 4 second response messages) returned by the secondary access network device.

Based on the above procedure, the primary access network device may obtain the identifier of the PSCell that needs to be added or changed and is determined by the secondary access network device, thereby determining the first configuration information, and sending the first configuration information to the terminal device. The second configuration information is obtained similarly to the first configuration information, and is not described herein again.

As an optional embodiment, the method further includes: the primary access network device sends at least one request message to a secondary access network device, the secondary access network device receives the at least one request message from the primary access network device, the at least one request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCells, and one request message carries the measurement result of one candidate PSCell or the identification of one candidate PSCell; the auxiliary access network equipment sends at least one response message to the main access network equipment based on the at least one request message, the main access network equipment receives the at least one response message from the auxiliary access network equipment, and the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message; and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the at least one response message.

In this embodiment, the primary access network device first determines the number of pscells that need to be added or modified, and then sends the same number of request messages to the secondary access network device, where one request message carries the measurement result of a candidate PSCell determined by one primary access network device. It should be understood that these candidate pscells are those that the master access network device considers to be capable of being candidate pscells, and are not final candidate pscells. And the auxiliary access network equipment receives the at least one request message, determines whether to agree to use the candidate PSCell corresponding to the request message as a final candidate PSCell according to the measurement result of the candidate PSCell carried in the request message, and returns at least one response message to the main access network equipment. For example, the primary access network device requests 4 cells as candidate pscells, the primary access network device may send 4 request messages to the secondary access network device, for example, request message 1 corresponds to PSCell 1, request message 2 corresponds to PSCell 2, request message 3 corresponds to PSCell 3, request message 4 corresponds to PSCell 4, the secondary access network device agrees to use only 3 pscells among them, e.g., PSCell 1, PSCell 2, and PSCell 4, as candidate pscells, the secondary access network device may send 4 response messages to the primary access network device, e.g., response message 1 indicating agreement, response message 2 indicating agreement, response message 3 indicating rejection, response message 4 indicating rejection, where response message 1 is a response to request message 1, response message 2 is a response to request message 2, response message 3 is a response to request message 3, and response message 4 is a response to request message 4.

Fig. 3 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application. The method 300 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S310, the primary access network device sends a first request message to the secondary access network device, where the first request message is used to request to add or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell.

Correspondingly, the secondary access network equipment receives the first request message.

S320, the secondary access network device sends a first response message to the primary access network device, where the first response message carries the number of candidate pscells to be added or modified.

Correspondingly, the primary access network equipment receives the first response message from the secondary access network equipment,

s330, the primary access network device sends at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of the candidate pscells, where the at least one second request message is used for requesting to add or modify the configuration of the candidate pscells.

Correspondingly, the secondary access network equipment receives the at least one second request message,

s340, the secondary access network device sends at least one second response message to the primary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message.

Correspondingly, the primary access network equipment receives at least one second response message from the secondary access network equipment

S350, the primary access network device sends configuration information to the terminal device based on the first response message and the at least one second response message, where the configuration information is used to configure the candidate PSCell.

It should be understood that, in a possible implementation manner, if the number of pscells that need to be added or modified is carried in the first response message, or the ID list of pscells that need to be added or modified, the terminal device may send at least one second request message in parallel, or send at least one second request message in series, in which case, the secondary access network device may carry IDs of corresponding candidate pscells in at least one second response message sent to the terminal device.

Based on the above procedure, the primary access network device may obtain the identifier of the PSCell that needs to be added or changed and is determined by the secondary access network device, thereby determining the configuration information, and sending the configuration information to the terminal device.

Fig. 4 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application. The method 400 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S410, the primary access network device sends at least one request message to the secondary access network device, where the at least one request message is used to request to add or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell.

Correspondingly, the secondary access network device receives the at least one request message.

Wherein a request message carries a measurement result of a candidate PSCell or an identification of a candidate PSCell.

S420, the secondary access network device sends at least one response message to the primary access network device, where the at least one response message is respectively used to indicate whether to accept the at least one request message.

Correspondingly, the primary access network device receives at least one response message from the secondary access network device.

S430, the primary access network device sends configuration information to the terminal device based on the at least one response message, where the configuration information is used to configure the candidate PSCell.

Fig. 5 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application. The method 500 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S510, the primary access network device or the secondary access network device sends first configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell and access conditions of each candidate PSCell in the at least one candidate PSCell.

Correspondingly, the terminal device receives the first configuration information and tries to access the candidate PSCell meeting the access condition in at least one candidate PSCell configured in the first configuration information.

S520, the terminal device determines that the SCG access fails, where the SCG access failure indicates: the SCG of the terminal device is in problem, or the terminal device fails to access one of the at least one candidate PSCell.

S530, the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to the main access network equipment.

Correspondingly, the primary access network device receives the SCG failure information.

S540, the main access network equipment sends second configuration information to the terminal equipment

Correspondingly, the terminal equipment receives the second configuration information.

It should be understood that S520 and S530 are optional steps, that is, in this embodiment, the main access network device may send the second configuration information to the terminal device based on the SCG failure information sent by the terminal device, or send the second configuration information to the terminal device based on other reasons, which is not limited in this embodiment of the present application.

It should also be understood that the first configuration information and the second configuration information described above are each incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information.

And S550, the terminal equipment determines whether to carry out the configuration of the PSCell according to the second configuration information.

For example, if there is a candidate PSCell that satisfies the corresponding access condition, or the terminal device has successfully accessed in the candidate PSCell that satisfies the access condition, the terminal device may perform any one of the following steps:

1. the terminal equipment ignores the second configuration information;

2. the terminal equipment sends first indication information to the main access network equipment, wherein the first indication information is used for indicating that candidate PSCells meeting configuration triggering conditions exist, and correspondingly, the main access network equipment receives the first indication information; alternatively, the first and second electrodes may be,

3. if the terminal device is accessing or has successfully accessed to the first candidate PSCell, the terminal device may cancel the access of the first candidate PSCell or rollback to a configuration before accessing the first candidate PSCell, and perform PSCell configuration according to the second configuration information. Optionally, the terminal device may send second indication information to the primary access network device, where the second indication information is used to indicate to cancel the access of the first candidate PSCell or to fallback to a configuration before accessing the first candidate PSCell. Optionally, the primary access network device receives the second indication information, and then instructs the secondary access network device to cancel the access of the terminal device to the first candidate PSCell.

For example, if the access condition of each of the at least one candidate PSCell is not satisfied, the terminal device may directly perform PSCell configuration according to the second configuration information.

According to the method for configuring the PSCells, by specifying the behavior of the terminal device, the terminal device performs the PSCell configuration according to the second configuration information of the network side under the condition that the access condition of each candidate PSCell in at least one candidate PSCell is not satisfied, the situation that the PSCell configuration of the terminal device is changed into the candidate PSCell configuration does not occur, and the new configuration issued by the main access network device is based on the increment configuration of the previous PSCell is avoided, so that the service interruption caused by RRC reconstruction of the terminal device is avoided, and the PSCell configuration efficiency of the terminal device is improved.

Fig. 6 is a schematic flow chart of another method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to the embodiment of the present application. The method 600 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S610, the primary access network device or the secondary access network device sends first configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell and access conditions of each candidate PSCell in the at least one candidate PSCell.

Correspondingly, the terminal device receives the first configuration information and tries to access the candidate PSCell meeting the access condition in at least one candidate PSCell configured in the first configuration information. .

S620, the terminal device determines that SCG access fails, starts a timer, and continues to attempt to access the candidate PSCell satisfying the access condition in the at least one candidate PSCell configured in the first configuration information before the timer expires, and after the timer expires, the terminal device does not perform access to the candidate PSCell.

S630, the terminal device sends SCG failure information to the main access network device.

It should be understood that the terminal device may send the SCG failure information to the main access network device before starting the timer, or may send the SCG failure information to the main access network device after starting the timer, which is not limited in this embodiment of the present application. The terminal device may send the SCG failure information to the main access network device before the timer times out, or may send the SCG failure information to the main access network device after the timer times out. This is explained in detail in two cases.

In case 1, if the terminal device sends SCG failure information to the primary access network device before the timer expires (including before the timer is started), the method further includes the following steps:

s640, when the master access network device receives the SCG failure information, a timer is started, before the timer expires, the master access network device may not send a new configuration to the terminal device, and after the timer expires, the master access network device may send the new configuration to the terminal device. It should be understood that the duration of the timer of the primary access network device is greater than or equal to the duration of the timer of the terminal device.

In case 2, if the terminal device sends SCG failure information to the main access network device after the timer expires, the network device may send new configuration to the terminal device according to the SCG failure information without starting the timer.

Alternatively, in case 1 or case 2, the following steps may be performed:

s650, the main access network device sends the second configuration information to the terminal device.

Since the terminal device is the SCG failure information that is sent to the network device after stopping accessing the candidate PSCell, or the network device has started a timer, and the terminal device is sent the second configuration information after the timer expires, if the terminal device does not access a new candidate PSCell, the second configuration information is the incremental configuration based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information; if the terminal device accesses a new candidate PSCell, the second configuration information is an incremental configuration based on a configuration of the new candidate PSCell accessed by the terminal device.

And S660, the terminal equipment configures the PSCell according to the second configuration information.

According to the method for configuring the PSCell, the timer is started through the terminal device, the SCG failure information is not sent to the main access network device before the timer is overtime, the PSCell configuration of the terminal device based on the latest PSCell accessed by the terminal device and sent by the network device to the terminal device is enabled not to be changed into the candidate PSCell configuration, the new configuration issued by the main access network device is based on the increment configuration of the previous PSCell, service interruption caused by RRC reconstruction of the terminal device is avoided, and the PSCell configuration efficiency of the terminal device is improved.

It should be understood that the method 600 is based on the premise that the main access network device issues a new configuration (i.e., the second configuration information) to the terminal device only according to the SCG failure information reported by the terminal device, and if the terminal device does not send the SCG failure information to the network device, the main access network device does not issue the new configuration to the terminal device.

Fig. 7 shows a schematic flow chart of a method for configuring a primary and secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application. The method 700 may be applied to the communication system 100 shown in fig. 1, but the embodiment of the present application is not limited thereto.

S710, the primary access network device or the secondary access network device sends first configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell and access conditions of each candidate PSCell in the at least one candidate PSCell.

S720, the terminal device determines that the number of access failures in the candidate PSCell is greater than or equal to a preset threshold.

And S730, the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to the main access network equipment.

S740, the main access network device sends the second configuration information to the terminal device based on the received SCG failure information.

Optionally, in S750, the terminal device performs PSCell configuration according to the second configuration information.

In this embodiment of the application, the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information. After the terminal device fails to execute the candidate PSCell once, it may try to access the next candidate PSCell satisfying the access condition until the number of accesses reaches a preset threshold. The preset threshold may be obtained by the terminal device in advance. Therefore, in the embodiment of the present application, when the number of access failures of the candidate PSCell reaches or exceeds the preset threshold, the terminal device sends SCG failure information to the main access network device to trigger the main access network device to send a new configuration (i.e., the second configuration information). After receiving the second configuration information, the terminal device may perform PSCell configuration directly according to the second configuration information.

In the method for configuring the PSCell according to the embodiment of the present application, the terminal device sends the SCG failure information to the primary access network device when the number of times of access failure of the candidate PSCell is greater than or equal to the preset threshold, so that the network device sends the second configuration information to the terminal device only when the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is not changed based on the first configuration information, and the situation that the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device is changed into the configuration of the candidate PSCell and a new configuration issued by the primary access network device is based on an incremental configuration of the PSCell previously accessed by the terminal device does not occur, which is beneficial to avoiding service interruption caused by RRC reestablishment of the terminal device, and improving efficiency of the terminal device in configuring the PSCell.

It should be understood that the method 700 is based on the premise that the main access network device issues a new configuration (i.e., the second configuration information) to the terminal device only according to the SCG failure information reported by the terminal device, and if the terminal device does not send the SCG failure information to the network device, the main access network device does not issue the new configuration to the terminal device.

It should be understood that the sequence numbers of the above-mentioned processes do not mean the execution sequence, and the execution sequence of each process should be determined by its function and inherent logic, and should not constitute any limitation to the implementation process of the embodiments of the present application.

The method for configuring the primary and secondary cells according to the embodiment of the present application is described in detail above with reference to fig. 1 to 7, and the apparatus for configuring the primary and secondary cells according to the embodiment of the present application is described in detail below with reference to fig. 8 to 9.

Fig. 8 illustrates an apparatus 800 for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell according to an embodiment of the present application. In one design, the apparatus 800 may be a terminal device or a chip in a terminal device. In another design, the apparatus 800 may be a network device, which may be a primary access network device or a secondary access network device in a DC communication scenario, or may be a chip in the network device. The apparatus 800 comprises: a transceiving unit 810 and a processing unit 820.

In one possible implementation manner, the apparatus 800 is configured to execute the respective procedures and steps corresponding to the network device in the method described above.

The transceiving unit 810 is configured to: receiving SCG failure information of a secondary cell group from a terminal device, wherein the terminal device has first configuration information, the first configuration information comprises the configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the SCG failure information carries at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access; the processing unit 820 is configured to: and determining whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

Optionally, the processing unit 820 is specifically configured to: when the CPAC is not configured by the terminal equipment, or the number of times of executing the at least one candidate PSCell access by the terminal equipment is larger than or equal to a preset threshold value, determining to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment.

Optionally, the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: sending second configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on a configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information.

Optionally, the processing unit 820 is specifically configured to: when the terminal device is configured with the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs candidate primary and secondary cell access is smaller than a preset threshold value, determining not to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, or determining to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device in a full configuration manner.

Optionally, the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: sending third configuration information to the terminal equipment, wherein the third configuration information comprises full configuration indication information or release indication information; the full configuration indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to initialize the wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration is independent of the wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device receives the third configuration information.

Optionally, the apparatus is used for a primary access network device or a secondary access network device, and includes: the device is a main access network device or an auxiliary access network device; alternatively, the apparatus is a component, such as a chip or a system-on-chip, for the apparatus to be a primary access network device or a secondary access network device.

Optionally, the apparatus is for a primary access network device, and the processing unit 820 is further configured to: determining whether the CPAC is configured for the terminal device to be the primary access network device or a secondary access network device; the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: and when the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the auxiliary access network equipment, sending the SCG failure information to the auxiliary access network equipment.

Optionally, the apparatus is used for a primary access network device, and the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: sending a first request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell; receiving a first response message from the secondary access network device, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate pscells that need to be added or modified; sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the at least one second request message requesting to add or modify a configuration of a candidate PSCell; receiving at least one second response message from the secondary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message, respectively; and sending the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the first response message and the at least one second response message.

Optionally, the apparatus is used for a secondary access network device, and the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: receiving a first request message from a primary access network device, the first request message requesting to add or modify a configuration of a candidate PSCell; sending a first response message to the primary access network device, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be added or modified; receiving at least one second request message from the secondary access network device, the at least one second request message being for requesting an addition or modification of a configuration of a candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell; and sending at least one second response message to the master access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message, respectively.

Optionally, the apparatus is used for a primary access network device, and the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: sending at least one request message to a secondary access network device, the at least one request message being used for requesting to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, wherein one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identifier of one candidate PSCell; receiving at least one response message from the secondary access network device, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message; and sending the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the at least one response message.

Optionally, the apparatus is used for a secondary access network device, and the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: receiving at least one request message from the primary access network device, the at least one request message being used for requesting to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, wherein one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identification of one candidate PSCell; and sending at least one response message to the primary access network equipment based on the at least one request message, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message.

In another possible implementation manner, the apparatus 800 is configured to execute each flow and step corresponding to the terminal device in the foregoing method.

The device is used for a terminal device or the device is a terminal device, the terminal device has first configuration information, and the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell; the processing unit 820 is configured to: determining that the secondary cell group SCG access fails, the transceiving unit 810 is configured to: the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to main access network equipment, wherein the SCG failure information comprises at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access.

Optionally, the SCG access failure indicates: the SCG of the terminal device is in a problem, or the terminal device fails to access one of the at least one candidate PSCell.

Optionally, the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: receiving second configuration information from the primary access network device, the first configuration information and the second configuration information each being an incremental configuration based on a configuration of a PSCell before the apparatus obtains the first configuration information; the processing unit 820 is further configured to: and accessing the terminal equipment to the PSCell meeting the conditions based on the second configuration information.

Optionally, the transceiver unit 810 is further configured to: receiving third configuration information from the primary access network device, where the third configuration information includes full configuration indication information or release indication information, where the full configuration indication information is used to indicate the apparatus to initialize a radio configuration, so that the radio configuration is independent of a radio configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information; the processing unit 820 is further configured to: and releasing the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information.

It should be appreciated that the apparatus 800 herein is embodied in the form of a functional unit. The term "unit" herein may refer to an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (e.g., a shared, dedicated, or group processor) and memory that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, and/or other suitable components that support the described functionality. In an optional example, it may be understood by those skilled in the art that the apparatus 800 may be embodied as a terminal device or a network device in the foregoing embodiment, and the apparatus 800 may be configured to execute each procedure and/or step corresponding to the terminal device or the network device in the foregoing method embodiment, and in order to avoid repetition, details are not described here again.

The apparatus 800 of each of the above schemes has a function of implementing corresponding steps executed by the terminal device or the network device in the above method; the functions can be realized by hardware, and the functions can also be realized by executing corresponding software by hardware. The hardware or software includes one or more modules corresponding to the above-described functions. For example, the transceiver 810 may include a transmitter and a receiver, the transmitter may be configured to implement each step and/or flow corresponding to the transceiver for performing a transmitting action, and the receiver may be configured to implement each step and/or flow corresponding to the transceiver for performing a receiving action. The transmitting unit may be replaced by a transmitter, and the receiving unit may be replaced by a receiver, which performs transceiving operations and related processing operations in the respective method embodiments, respectively.

In an embodiment of the present application, the apparatus 800 in fig. 8 may also be a chip or a chip system, for example: system on chip (SoC). Correspondingly, the transceiver unit 810 may be a transceiver circuit of the chip, and is not limited herein.

Fig. 9 illustrates another apparatus 900 for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell provided in an embodiment of the present application. The apparatus 900 includes a processor 910, a transceiver 920, and a memory 930. Wherein, the processor 910, the transceiver 920 and the memory 930 are in communication with each other through an internal connection path, the memory 930 is used for storing instructions, and the processor 910 is used for executing the instructions stored in the memory 930 to control the transceiver 920 to transmit and/or receive signals.

In one possible implementation manner, the apparatus 900 is configured to execute the respective procedures and steps corresponding to the network device in the foregoing method.

Wherein the processor 910 is configured to: receiving, by the transceiver 920, secondary cell group, SCG, failure information from a terminal device, the terminal device having first configuration information, the first configuration information including a configuration of at least one candidate primary secondary cell, PSCell, the SCG failure information carrying at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access; and determining whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

In another possible implementation manner, the apparatus 900 is configured to execute the respective flows and steps corresponding to the terminal device in the foregoing method.

Wherein the apparatus is used for a terminal device or the apparatus is a terminal device, the terminal device has first configuration information, the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the processor 910 is configured to: determining SCG access failure of the auxiliary cell group; transmitting SCG failure information to a main access network device through a transceiver 920, wherein the SCG failure information includes at least one of the following information: whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC; the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or, the number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access.

It should be understood that the apparatus 900 may be embodied as a terminal device or a network device in the foregoing embodiments, and may be configured to perform each step and/or flow corresponding to the terminal device or the network device in the foregoing method embodiments. Alternatively, the memory 930 may include a read-only memory and a random access memory, and provides instructions and data to the processor. The portion of memory may also include non-volatile random access memory. For example, the memory may also store device type information. The processor 910 may be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory, and when the processor 910 executes the instructions stored in the memory, the processor 910 is configured to perform the steps and/or processes of the method embodiments corresponding to the terminal device or the network device. The transceiver 920 may include a transmitter and a receiver, the transmitter may be configured to implement the steps and/or processes for performing the sending action corresponding to the transceiver, and the receiver may be configured to implement the steps and/or processes for performing the receiving action corresponding to the transceiver.

It should be understood that in the embodiment of the present application, the processor of the above apparatus may be a Central Processing Unit (CPU), and the processor may also be other general processors, Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) or other programmable logic devices, discrete gate or transistor logic devices, discrete hardware components, and the like. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor or the processor may be any conventional processor or the like.

In implementation, the steps of the above method may be performed by integrated logic circuits of hardware in a processor or instructions in the form of software. The steps of a method disclosed in connection with the embodiments of the present application may be directly implemented by a hardware processor, or may be implemented by a combination of hardware and software elements in a processor. The software elements may be located in ram, flash, rom, prom, or eprom, registers, among other storage media that are well known in the art. The storage medium is located in a memory, and a processor executes instructions in the memory, in combination with hardware thereof, to perform the steps of the above-described method. To avoid repetition, it is not described in detail here.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the various method steps and elements described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein can be implemented as electronic hardware, computer software, or combinations of both, and that the steps and elements of the various embodiments have been described above generally in terms of their functionality in order to clearly illustrate the interchangeability of hardware and software. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware or software depends upon the particular application and design constraints imposed on the implementation. Skilled artisans may implement the described functionality in varying ways for each particular application, but such implementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing a departure from the scope of the present application.

It is clear to those skilled in the art that, for convenience and brevity of description, the specific working processes of the above-described systems, apparatuses and units may refer to the corresponding processes in the foregoing method embodiments, and are not described herein again.

In the several embodiments provided in the present application, it should be understood that the disclosed system, apparatus and method may be implemented in other ways. For example, the above-described apparatus embodiments are merely illustrative, and for example, the division of the units is only one logical division, and other divisions may be realized in practice, for example, a plurality of units or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted, or not executed. In addition, the shown or discussed mutual coupling or direct coupling or communication connection may be an indirect coupling or communication connection through some interfaces, devices or units, and may also be an electric, mechanical or other form of connection.

The units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed as units may or may not be physical units, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units. Some or all of the units can be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the solution of the embodiments of the present application.

In addition, functional units in the embodiments of the present application may be integrated into one processing unit, or each unit may exist alone physically, or two or more units are integrated into one unit. The integrated unit can be realized in a form of hardware, and can also be realized in a form of a software functional unit.

The integrated unit, if implemented in the form of a software functional unit and sold or used as a stand-alone product, may be stored in a computer readable storage medium. Based on such understanding, the technical solution of the present application may be substantially or partially contributed by the prior art, or all or part of the technical solution may be embodied in a software product, which is stored in a storage medium and includes instructions for causing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device) to execute all or part of the steps of the method according to the embodiments of the present application. And the aforementioned storage medium includes: various media capable of storing program codes, such as a usb disk, a removable hard disk, a read-only memory (ROM), a Random Access Memory (RAM), a magnetic disk, or an optical disk.

While the invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments, the scope of the invention is not limited thereto, and those skilled in the art can easily conceive various equivalent modifications or substitutions within the technical scope of the invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the present application shall be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

1. A method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell, comprising:

the method comprises the following steps that network equipment receives SCG failure information of a secondary cell group from terminal equipment, the terminal equipment is provided with first configuration information, the first configuration information comprises the configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the SCG failure information carries at least one of the following information:

whether the terminal device is configured with condition-based PSCell addition or change CPAC;

the terminal device is configured with the CPAC; or the like, or, alternatively,

a number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access;

and the network equipment determines whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the network device determining whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device according to the SCG failure information comprises:

when the terminal device does not configure the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access is greater than or equal to a preset threshold value, the network device determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

the network device sends second configuration information to the terminal device, wherein the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the network device determining whether to change the PSCell configuration of the terminal device according to the SCG failure information comprises:

when the terminal device configures the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs candidate primary and secondary cell access is smaller than a preset threshold, the network device determines not to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, or determines to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device in a full configuration manner.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

the network equipment sends third configuration information to the terminal equipment, wherein the third configuration information comprises full configuration indication information or release indication information;

the full configuration indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to initialize the wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration is independent of the wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device receives the third configuration information.

6. The method of any of claims 1-5, wherein the network device is a primary access network device or a secondary access network device.

7. The method of any of claims 1-5, wherein the network device is a primary access network device, the method further comprising:

the main access network equipment determines whether the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the main access network equipment or auxiliary access network equipment;

and when the main access network equipment determines that the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the auxiliary access network equipment, the main access network equipment sends the SCG failure information to the auxiliary access network equipment.

8. The method of any of claims 1-7, wherein the network device is a primary access network device, the method further comprising:

the primary access network equipment sends a first request message to secondary access network equipment, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell;

the primary access network equipment receives a first response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified;

the primary access network device sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the at least one second request message being for requesting an increase or modification of the configuration of candidate pscells;

the primary access network device receives at least one second response message from the secondary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message;

and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the first response message and the at least one second response message.

9. The method of any of claims 1-7, wherein the network device is a secondary access network device, the method further comprising:

the auxiliary access network equipment receives a first request message from a main access network equipment, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCell;

the auxiliary access network equipment sends a first response message to the main access network equipment, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be increased or modified;

the secondary access network equipment receives at least one second request message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell;

and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one second response message to the primary access network equipment, wherein the at least one second response message carries the identifier of the candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message respectively.

10. The method of any of claims 1-7, wherein the network device is a primary access network device, the method further comprising:

the primary access network device sends at least one request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the at least one request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of the candidate PSCells, and one request message carries the measurement result of one candidate PSCell or the identification of one candidate PSCell;

the primary access network equipment receives at least one response message from the secondary access network equipment, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message;

and the main access network equipment sends the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the at least one response message.

11. The method of any of claims 1-7, wherein the network device is a secondary access network device, the method further comprising:

the secondary access network device receives at least one request message from the primary access network device, where the at least one request message is used to request to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, and one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identifier of one candidate PSCell;

and the secondary access network equipment sends at least one response message to the primary access network equipment based on the at least one request message, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message.

12. A method for configuring a primary cell and a secondary cell, comprising:

the method comprises the steps that terminal equipment determines that SCG access of a secondary cell group fails, the terminal equipment has first configuration information, and the first configuration information comprises configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell;

the terminal equipment sends SCG failure information to main access network equipment, wherein the SCG failure information comprises at least one of the following information:

a number of times the terminal device performs the at least one candidate PSCell access.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the SCG access failure indicates: the SCG of the terminal device is in a problem, or the terminal device fails to access one of the at least one candidate PSCell.

14. The method according to claim 12 or 13, characterized in that the method further comprises:

the terminal device receiving second configuration information from the main access network device, wherein the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information;

and the terminal equipment accesses the PSCell meeting the conditions based on the second configuration information.

15. The method according to claim 12 or 13, characterized in that the method further comprises:

the terminal device receives third configuration information from the main access network device, where the third configuration information includes full configuration indication information or release indication information, where the full configuration indication information is used to indicate the terminal device to initialize a wireless configuration, so that the wireless configuration is independent of a wireless configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the terminal device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device receives the third configuration information;

and the terminal equipment releases the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information.

16. An apparatus for configuring a primary and secondary cell, comprising:

a transceiver unit, configured to receive secondary cell group SCG failure information from a terminal device, where the terminal device has first configuration information, where the first configuration information includes configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell, and the SCG failure information carries at least one of following information:

and the processing unit is used for determining whether to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment or not according to the SCG failure information.

17. The apparatus according to claim 16, wherein the processing unit is specifically configured to:

when the CPAC is not configured by the terminal equipment, or the number of times of executing the at least one candidate PSCell access by the terminal equipment is larger than or equal to a preset threshold value, determining to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal equipment.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

sending second configuration information to the terminal device, where the first configuration information and the second configuration information are both incremental configurations based on a configuration of the PSCell before the terminal device obtains the first configuration information.

19. The apparatus according to claim 16, wherein the processing unit is specifically configured to:

when the terminal device is configured with the CPAC, or the number of times that the terminal device performs candidate primary and secondary cell access is smaller than a preset threshold value, determining not to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device, or determining to change the configuration of the PSCell of the terminal device in a full configuration manner.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

sending third configuration information to the terminal equipment, wherein the third configuration information comprises full configuration indication information or release indication information;

21. The apparatus of any of claims 16 to 20, wherein the apparatus is for a primary access network device or a secondary access network device.

22. The apparatus according to any of claims 16 to 20, wherein the apparatus is for a primary access network device, and wherein the processing unit is further configured to:

determining whether the CPAC is configured for the terminal device to be the primary access network device or a secondary access network device;

the transceiver unit is further configured to:

and when the CPAC configured for the terminal equipment is the auxiliary access network equipment, sending the SCG failure information to the auxiliary access network equipment.

23. The apparatus according to any of claims 16 to 22, wherein the apparatus is configured to a primary access network device, and wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

sending a first request message to a secondary access network device, wherein the first request message is used for requesting to increase or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell;

receiving a first response message from the secondary access network device, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate pscells that need to be added or modified;

sending at least one second request message to the secondary access network device based on the number of candidate pscells, the at least one second request message requesting to add or modify a configuration of a candidate PSCell;

receiving at least one second response message from the secondary access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message, respectively;

and sending the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the first response message and the at least one second response message.

24. The apparatus according to any of claims 16 to 22, wherein the apparatus is configured to assist an access network device, and wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

receiving a first request message from a primary access network device, the first request message requesting to add or modify a configuration of a candidate PSCell;

sending a first response message to the primary access network device, wherein the first response message carries the number of candidate PSCells needing to be added or modified;

receiving at least one second request message from the secondary access network device, the at least one second request message being for requesting an addition or modification of a configuration of a candidate primary and secondary cell PSCell;

and sending at least one second response message to the master access network device, where the at least one second response message carries an identifier of a candidate PSCell corresponding to the at least one second request message, respectively.

25. The apparatus according to any of claims 16 to 22, wherein the apparatus is a primary access network device, and the transceiver unit is further configured to:

sending at least one request message to a secondary access network device, the at least one request message being used for requesting to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, wherein one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identifier of one candidate PSCell;

receiving at least one response message from the secondary access network device, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message;

and sending the first configuration information to the terminal equipment based on the at least one response message.

26. The apparatus according to any of claims 16 to 22, wherein the apparatus is configured to assist an access network device, and the transceiver unit is further configured to:

receiving at least one request message from the primary access network device, the at least one request message being used for requesting to add or modify the configuration of a candidate PSCell, wherein one request message carries a measurement result of one candidate PSCell or an identification of one candidate PSCell;

and sending at least one response message to the primary access network equipment based on the at least one request message, wherein the at least one response message is respectively used for indicating whether to accept the at least one request message.

27. An apparatus for configuring a primary and secondary cell, the apparatus being for a terminal device having first configuration information comprising a configuration of at least one candidate primary and secondary cell, PSCell,

the device comprises:

the processing unit is used for determining SCG access failure of the auxiliary cell group;

a transceiving unit, configured to send SCG failure information to a master access network device, where the SCG failure information includes at least one of the following information:

28. The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the SCG access failure indicates: the SCG of the terminal device is in a problem, or the terminal device fails to access one of the at least one candidate PSCell.

29. The apparatus according to claim 27 or 28, wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

receiving second configuration information from the primary access network device, the first configuration information and the second configuration information each being an incremental configuration based on a configuration of a PSCell before the apparatus obtains the first configuration information;

the processing unit is further to:

and accessing the terminal equipment to the PSCell meeting the conditions based on the second configuration information.

30. The apparatus according to claim 27 or 28, wherein the transceiver unit is further configured to:

receiving third configuration information from the primary access network device, where the third configuration information includes full configuration indication information or release indication information, where the full configuration indication information is used to indicate the apparatus to initialize a radio configuration, so that the radio configuration is independent of a radio configuration configured before the terminal device receives the third configuration information; the release indication information is used for indicating the device to release the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information;

the processing unit is further to:

and releasing the configuration of the PSCell before the terminal equipment receives the third configuration information.

31. A communications apparatus, comprising: a memory and a processor; the memory for storing a computer program which, when invoked by the processor in the memory, causes the apparatus to perform the method of any one of claims 1 to 15.

32. A computer-readable medium for storing a computer program, characterized in that the computer program comprises instructions for implementing the method according to any one of claims 1 to 15.